278 GENERAL RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 



mechanical transfer to the new generation of a set of ideas or habits 

 that control the older generation. The deposit of truth that the 

 ages have accumulated certifies itself less by the weight of tradition, 

 less by the compulsion of logic, than by entering as a vitalizing 

 factor into the whole of a free and growing life. The realities of 

 life have to be found out, or at least verified, by each generation, 

 and by each individual, through an original experience. Only that 

 is the true light which is also the life of men. Only that is true educa- 

 tion which, abjuring all methods of forcing or externally fastening 

 beliefs upon the mind, relies in unwavering faith upon the innate 

 capacity of men to assimilate the truth and even to discern the truth 

 thereby. Christianity lays the basis for such faith in its declaration 

 that to every man coming into the world is given the true light, which 

 is also the life of men, so that, when truth comes to men it comes to 

 its own. 



Our time has characteristic spiritual needs which only religious 

 education can supply. In earlier times religion was in larger measure 

 a refuge from the poverty of life's resources. Men turned to eternal 

 things as compensation for the lack of temporal goods. In God and 

 heaven they found safety and freedom to offset the serfdoms, the 

 oppressions, the arbitrariness and insecurity of earthly society. Here 

 they found enlargement and relief from the hard conditions of indus- 

 trial life. Through religion the whole horizon of a narrow existence 

 was lifted, revealing the islands of the blessed. 



But the peoples that have yielded themselves to the modern 

 movement no longer suffer from any such cramped existence. Geo- 

 graphical, astronomical, and other discoveries; modern invention, 

 with its transformation of industries; modern commerce and inter- 

 communication between men; popular education and popular govern- 

 ment, these have so diversified life, and so enlarged its physical and 

 mental resources, that to-day men are finding in their ordinary oc- 

 cupations the enlargement which once they fled to religion to obtain. 



Yet the old need is here, though the point of its impact has changed. 

 We have, indeed, more and larger things to occupy our attention, but 

 now as ever the life of a man " consisteth not in the abundance of 

 the things that he possesseth," whether these things be material 

 goods or the wealth of the mind. We are, in fact, so occupied and 

 so distracted with the multifarious means of living that we forget to 

 live. We are rich in objects, in ideas, in projects, but because we do 

 not relate them to any principle that has finality in it our lives are 

 fragmentary and ununified. We are full of movement, but we know 

 not how to arrive. We are so desirous of keeping "up to date " that 

 we lose ourselves in the flow of time. Even our philanthropic and 

 not seldom our religious enterprises have something of this spirit of 

 distraction and divided selfhood. 



